Obsessed with the Smurfs! Part 1
by Lac Lausanne
Summary: Gargamel and Azrael are stuck in New York city. They have to wait at least three weeks before they can attempt to invoke a blue moon. Will they forget about the Smurfs or become even more obsessed with them?
1. Chapter 1

Obsessed with the Smurfs!

For the first few days after the 'bus' incident, Gargamel stayed in his hideout in the castle. He had sustained a nasty ankle injury and could not walk far, it had been hard work just getting back in one piece as he almost got run over a second time. By an old man on a mobility scooter who decided that the pavement was his own personal racetrack. But this time Gargamel fought back and cast a spell that ran the battery down in seconds. It felt good to be in control again.

Although he did not have the Dragon wand anymore he still had the small stick that he took from the woman at the fashion show. To be honest any stick would do the job as he still had lots of magic essence left. In the heat of the battle the machine had been left to run and had completed its job. It was enough to fill a small glass phial and Gargamel kept it on him always. He also decided to use a satchel to carry what he found when foraging in the park. He knew that the Smurfs had managed to escape back to his world, unfortunately for him he would have to wait in this hell for at least three weeks until the next full moon, when he would be able to use the Smurf essence to make another blue moon.

He liked the park, it was an oasis of calm compared to the madness and chaos of the streets. Although he and Azrael were always hungry, they managed to find what they needed from the bins. Well there was more food in this world than in their own and he did not have to go hunting for it. He was now bored of foraging and wanted to explore more of this place people called New York. Now that his ankle was better this was a good time as any.

He still wore his old robes but without the cloak, it had annoyed him. As this was a big city no-one batted an eye at what he was wearing, to them he either looked like a homeless weirdo or some kind of monk doing penance. This suited Gargamel quite well. He despised talking to anyone else unless he had to and wearing his strange clothes made people get out of the way so he could walk along the pavements unhindered by social niceties. He also found out that putting the cowl over his head made people give him an even wider berth. This amused him greatly.

He was much more careful now about crossing roads and was one of the rare people to wait for the green man instead of just taking their chance and running across. He unconsciously started to bend down to rub his hurt ankle, the memory of being hit by that bus was going to haunt him for years to come.

After walking for about two hours they came to an area of the city full of arcade halls and gaming machines. Gargamel and Azrael were quite mesmerised by the flashing lights and noises and spent sometime just watching others using the machines. The evil wizard was also glad to have a bit of a rest, his ankle was playing up again and it was good to sit down for a few minutes whilst watching the world go by.

Gargamel noted that everyone in the arcade had to feed the machines with money and that some of them went to other machines that spewed out lots of coins.

He cursed his luck that he did not have any money with him. He got up to have a closer look and today was his lucky day. He happened to walk past some of the one-arm bandits just as a punter hit the jackpot. Money came out so quickly that a couple of coins fell at Gargamel's feet. He quickly stood on them and then pretended to adjust his footwear. The jackpot winner did not notice his deviousness and Gargamel went to one of the other one arm bandits and put a coin into the slot.

"Right, so if I've got this right, I pull down this metal arm and the machine will give me money, isn't that right Azrael?" His cat just shook his head "Bah! What do you know? You're only a cat!" Gargamel gave the arm a tug and watched the numbers and symbols spinning in front of him, eventually they settled down and stopped. Gargamel was waiting expectantly for the money to come out. "Why is this thing not working? Give me my money!" He gave the machine a thump and this set off the motion alarm.

Before he knew it two hulking security guards grabbed him and Gargamel found himself unceremoniously thrown out onto the street where he landed hard on his backside.

"How dare you manhandle the great and powerful wizard Gargamel! I'll turn you both into toads!" The security guards just looked at him and laughed "Take your meds chum!" replied one of them. Gargamel was seething inside and was just starting to open up his poison ring and reaching for his wand, when Azrael meowed at him very loudly and started to scratch at his leggings "Ow! What are you doing fool cat?" He looked down and Azrael was looking very worried. Then it dawned on Gargamel that he better back down pretty quick or they might attack him with their own magic like last time. He did not like that feeling and the thought of being locked up again with all those behemoths was enough to make Gargamel hold up his hands and slowly back away from the security guards "Ok I'm going but don't think you've won!" he said over his shoulder as he quickly walked away. He then promptly fell over Azrael and landed in a large puddle of water

The security guards just stood on the pavement almost wetting themselves with laughter at the antics of this strange man.

"Curses, curses on them all," muttered Gargamel under his breath. He was already getting fed up of his adventure, but he was determined to get hold of some more money. His magic did not seem to affect the machines in walls where people fed plastic cards into them and all other sources of money were well guarded. He was not going to stoop so low as to rob someone. "Azrael, there must be another way to get money around here?" Azrael walked a little further forward and sat down by a metal box on a pole at the side of the pavement. "What, do you think I can get money from this?" asked Gargamel whilst he examined the machine. "Meoow,merrow!" answered his faithful cat.

"Ok, I'll give it a try," Gargamel took out his wand, flicked open the poison ring and dabbed a small drop of Smurf essence onto the end of the wand and chanted "Aurum tuum et argentum, modo nummos solvo," As soon as he had finished the incantation the parking meter started to release it's coins. Gargamel caught them in his robes and transferred them to his satchel. "Ha,ha! Now we have plenty of money, what shall we do with it? I know, lets have some proper food, look there's a cafe over there" Before the cat could even say anything, Gargamel was off marching down the road, his mind set on getting some fresh food.

Once in the cafe he sat down and Azrael hid himself under the table. It was a nicer than normal cafe and in reality it was the smell of the coffee that drew him to this place. A waitress came up to him and said "May I take your order sir?" she said with that 'I'm so bored with this job' type of voice. "Yes you may wench. I desire one all day breakfast with a side order of mushrooms on toast and a large latte coffee," he told her with an air of haughtiness. The waitress had already decided that this person was going to be trouble before he even spoke and now her suspicions were proved beyond doubt. So she answered in a barely disguised sarcastic tone "How would..Sir be wanting his eggs?" Gargamel looked at her as if she was mad, "Cooked of course, there's not that many ways to do eggs is there?" this was the cue the waitress was waiting for and she took a deep breath and said "Do you want your eggs, sunny side up, scrambled, poached, basted, shirred, over hard, over medium, over easy, hard boiled, soft boiled or as an omelette?" She stood waiting for the weird man to answer. In truth Gargamel was not really listening as whilst she had been talking he noticed a small child walk past the window holding a Smurf in her hand, she had walked past quite quickly so he did not get a good view, but it was Smurf blue. The waitress was getting impatient now and started to tap her foot and she then cleared her throat loudly "Hmm,hmm, did you hear what I said?" she asked him. "Eh? Oh whatever you said first," the distracted wizard replied. "Ok, so that will be sunny side up," and then she walked off down to the counter to place the order. "Azrael, did you see that? A Smurf! That old tramp was right, they are everywhere! I'll need to find out where they are coming from. As soon as we've eaten we'll have a look around."

The rest of his visit at the cafe passed without incident and the waitress just satisfied herself with knowing that an extra ingredient had been added to Gargamel's coffee. No one got away with calling her a 'Wench'. But Gargamel still had one more annoyance for her when he could only pay for the meal in dimes. She was glad to see the back of him and only then did she notice the cat sneaking out behind him.

"Glad he's gone, he was giving me the creeps," she remarked to her colleague.

Gargamel and Azrael were now on the hunt for Smurfs. He had not thought about them for almost a week now and just seeing that flash of blue was enough to awaken his Smurf hunting urges, even though they would be of no use to him in this world as he could not make a potion, he still wanted to catch one, even just holding one made him feel good. He was addicted to catching Smurfs whatever the cost to himself.

But what he did not realise, was that in our world all the Smurfs were just toys or cartoons, there were no real Smurfs anywhere.

They walked past another arcade and went inside. The one-arm bandits were in the corner, the video arcade games in another and various ride-on motorcycle games and photo boots were dotted in the centre of the room. They were about to leave when Gargamel spotted the Smurf blue again.

In the far corner of the room was a glass fronted machine full of Smurfs! He ran up to it and almost hit the glass in frustration when he realise they were just soft toys, not living, breathing creatures. "I was so sure that it was a real Smurf that I saw!" he said to Azrael, his cat just looked at him with a look of pity that his owner could be so mistaken.

To be continued…


	2. Chapter 2

Obsessed with Smurfs (part 2)

Gargamel and Azrael decided that they would try and get one of the soft toy Smurfs out of the machine they found. But before they could put a coin into the slot a Mother and her daughter came up to it. The child was jumping up and down nagging the harassed mother for a go on the machine. The parent looked at Gargamel as if to say "Please let her go first or none of our lives will be worth living."

Gargamel looked back at the mum and then the child and quickly stepped aside. The girl inserted the coin in the slot and Smurf music started up.

"Gah! Even here I still can't get away from their infernal singing!" The mother just rolled her eyes at him and then helped her daughter press the arrow buttons on the machine to move the grabbing hooks. The wizard noted that the buttons could only be pressed once before the grabber dropped down into the pile of Smurfs. He was then taken aback when both the child and the mother squealed with delight as the grabber emerged from the pile with a Smurf firmly in it's claws. It moved to the front of the machine and dropped the soft toy into a chute.

The little girl grabbed her new possession and they both walked off happy with their prize.

"Well that looks easy," said Gargamel to his cat which was hiding behind a gaming machine. "Any fool can catch these Smurfs, I mean they are all trapped in this box and they are not even real, so easy pickings. I could do with one or two to keep us entertained whilst we wait for the full moon. You also need to keep in shape for capturing Smurfs Azrael. Tie one to a string and then I'll get you running, heh,heh,heh."

He still had lots of dimes left so he inserted one into the coin slot and tried his best to mentally block out the horrid singing. He pushed the 'forward' button and held it down for a couple of seconds and then the 'sideways' button for a little longer. He was aiming for a Papa Smurf that lay on top of the pile. The grabber plunged down into the mass of Smurfs and slowly came up.

He had missed Papa, but the grabber had another Smurf in it's claws, it looked like Lazy Smurf. But the grip on the claws gave way and the soft toy fell back to rejoin it's kin. "Aarghhh! no near and yet so far! How infuriating, how come a little girl manages to capture one, but this one gives me the slip?"

But unbeknown to him, the machine had him in its grip and it would make sure that Gargamel would be so hooked that he would spend all his money.

As we all know, Gargamel does not know when to give up and he saw getting a Smurf out of the machine as a challenge and he was not going to let a 'magic' box get the better of him. The Smurfs in the machine were about twice as big as a real Smurf and although he could just use magic to get one, he felt that it would be cheating as he could get plenty of extra money from the parking meters outside if he needed to.

He put another coin in the slot and pushed the buttons. Again the claw plunged into the mêlée of Smurfs but this time it came up empty. "Curses! I didn't even manage to grab one that time, no matter I'll just try again," he hissed to himself . Another coin went into the slot, the grabber claw obeyed his commands and this time Gargamel saw that the claw had 'captured' Papa Smurf by the head. "Yes, yes! Come to Papa, Papa! Mwa,ha,ha,ha!" he laughed out loud.

A couple passing by stared at him as if he was a madman and quickened their pace.

The claw then moved to the front of the machine and dropped Gargamel's prize into the chute. He grabbed it with a look of triumph on his face he did a little dance and put it in his satchel. "Right Azrael, I think I'll try and get a half dozen of them just for luck."

After about half an hour of trying he could not get the claw to grab another one, he was getting very frustrated by now but managed to stay calm, although his face was getting redder by the minute. He still was not going to use his magic as he also noted the many reflective surfaces inside the machine and he was mindful that they could ricochet his spell and make things worse.

His faithful cat Azrael was still hiding behind one of the machines and was having a lovely dream about stalking and eating Smurfs when he was rudely awoken by Gargamel picking him up by the scruff of his neck and whispering in his ear "Azrael, I need you to go into the machine and pick five different Smurfs for me, can you do that?" The half awake cat just yowled as Gargamel stuffed him up the chute.

Once inside the machine, Azrael picked up a Gutsy Smurf toy and dropped it down the chute for his master. "Yes! Now try and find a Smurfette," urged Gargamel. The cat dug into the pile of Smurfs until he could see some yellow and buried his head into the mass of blue and white until he could grab hold of the golden locks with his teeth. Out popped Smurfette.

But Azrael did not give it to Gargamel. The feline suddenly felt very angry about something. Seeing the toy Smurfette reminded him of the fight he had with her at the castle and the way she had 'branded' him for life by causing that cage to rip his ear. This Smurfette can't fight back. His animal rage rose up inside him and he started to rip at the blue material that the Smurf toy was made from. It felt good ripping his claws made short work of the stitching down the sides and he tore out huge chunks of fluffy stuffing. He was unstoppable now and he grabbed another Smurf and tore into that one, then another and another and the machine started to fill up with loose stuffing.

He could not hear his master banging on the window of the machine and shouting at him. It felt good to be massacring all these Smurfs.

It only took him about five minutes to destroy most of the toys and all the stuffing had blocked up the chute. Gargamel was just glaring at Azrael from the other side of the glass and the cat felt that it was safer for now to stay where he was.

"Imbecile! What have you done? You only needed to get two more, now there are none left! Come, get out of there, we need to leave before they find out what's happened," said Gargamel trying to control his rage.

By now some other people had noticed what had been going on and had gathered around the wizard and the machine, some with a look of amusement other with angry faces. Gargamel just ignored them and called Azrael to the front of the machine. The feline had to dig his way out of all the stuffing and whilst Gargamel held open the flap, he made his way out of the machine but it was akin to jumping out of the frying pan into the fire as by now the owner of the Arcade was marching up to the gathering crowd and he started to shout "What is going on? Who is responsible for this damage?" Gargamel had tried to sneak away with Azrael tucked under his arm but the owner was onto him as several people were pointing at the wizard. He reached out and collared Gargamel by his cowl "Not so fast mate! Are you going to pay for this damage?" growled the owner. "Err, yes but I'll need to get the money first," croaked Gargamel.

Just then a small boy no older than six years old came up to the shaking wizard and started to cry "Your bad kitty, broke all the Smurfs, now I won't be able to have one, it's not fair, boo hoo," sobbed the little child.

Gargamel would usually say something witty back but for some reason this crying child stirred something inside of him that had not seen the light of day for years. He actually felt sorry for the child and wanted to help him.

Before he could even think of what he was doing he reached into his satchel and brought out one of the two Smurf toys that he had managed to get. "Here, take this Scottish Smurf if it will make you stop crying," he held out the toy to the boy. The child took the gift from Gargamel, smiled at him and ran off to find his parents.

"Very touching, but it won't get you off the hook," said the owner, "Come, we are going to my office and the police will be waiting for you." he added.

But Gargamel was not going to come quietly, the thought of being in custody again was too horrid a prospect and he flipped open his poison ring and dabbed some Smurf essence onto his wand, said some magic words and disappeared into thin air, leaving the people in the Arcade in a state of shock.

"Oh! not doing that again, it always makes me feel so sick and sleepy using that type of magic," groaned Gargamel as he got up from the floor of the castle. Azrael was just sitting there but his eyes were still spinning. "Meeroowww!" was all that he could utter before collapsing in a heap. "Do you know what Azrael, I think I'll have a kip as well. Gargamel took the satchel off his shoulder and took out the remaining Smurf toy, it was the Papa Smurf. He held it by the neck right in front of his face, "Just you wait until we get back to our world. I will bring unimaginable terrors upon you all, you mark my words!" said the evil wizard to the inanimate toy.

Taking the toy with him, he got into bed and was asleep within a couple of minutes.

It made for a strange scene, Gargamel in bed cuddling a Papa Smurf soft toy, but what he did not know yet was that the phial of Smurf essence that he kept in a leather pouch around his neck had been resting next to his heart for the last week or so and slowly but surely it had been irradiating him with 'Smurfiness' and his cold dark heart was being thawed out and shown the light of what it meant to be a Smurf.

There was still three weeks to go before the wizard could even attempt to invoke a 'Blue Moon' and maybe by then, for the sake of all Smurfdom. Gargamel would return a changed man

The End


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